Savior of the Suburbs
KITMAN, MARVIN
BILLIE SOL IN NEW JERSEY Savior of the Suburbs By Marvin Kitman In his inaugural address, President Kennedy urged Americans to ask not what their country can do for them, but what they...
...Lillian keeps everything locked up...
...BILLIE SOL IN NEW JERSEY Savior of the Suburbs By Marvin Kitman In his inaugural address, President Kennedy urged Americans to ask not what their country can do for them, but what they could do for their country...
...All of this seemed to be a minor problem for a Department of Agriculture obviously so anxious to help citizens who only want to find out what their country can do for them...
...Does he ever go to the Catskills...
...I must have looked worried about her health— actually I was worried about that Columbia University professor going directly to Washington and getting the jump on me—because the woman tried to console me by revealing that an even more important official, luckily, was in Hackensack...
...We have a report on that," he said opening and closing the same drawers again...
...Across the street I found the Department of Agriculture's Office of Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS...
...I said...
...Y-e-s-s," he said...
...You've been very helpful," I managed to say...
...What...
...Everything I have ever planted— collard greens, tulips, lettuce, marigolds, carrots—grew, and I do not know the first thing about agriculture...
...Constant tillage exhausts a field," Ovid once observed in Ars Amatoria, Book III...
...How can he get wisdom who holdeth the plow...
...To grease my way through the Department of Agriculture's lower echelons, I had brought along an S&H Green Stamp catalog...
...I plant everything around here...
...And corn...
...You're not up to any evil are you...
...The Fountain subcommittee uncovered one case where a warehouseman rented buildings from the Air Force for $29,000, and received nearly $2 million in government payments for storing wheat in them...
...Given all the trouble on the national level, I was not surprised that the Bergen County office was empty, except for a suburban matron sitting at a typewriter...
...How about cotton, corn, barley and sorghum...
...What are you running for...
...Good God, I thought, this guy will cost me a fortune...
...As far as I could see, there were only two elevators in all of Leonia—both in apartment buildings...
...I'll go ahead and plant those crops...
...Land's too valuable for wheat these days...
...You're the savior of the suburbs," she said...
...It's a deal then...
...When the Department of Agriculture recognized Leonia as the farm hub I planned to make it, there would be a vast need for storage elevators, and I would be in on the ground floor...
...I don't need them," he said...
...I asked...
...The tiny office was crowded with three desks, neat-looking in the way of companies just starting bankruptcy proceedings...
...My aim was to wheel and deal in grain storage facilities...
...I finally compromised and wore an all-black wash-and-wear suit which lent a spiritual note of earnestness to my mission...
...Marvin Kitman's last contribution to these pagse was "Politics Through a 'Monocle' " in our May 14 issue...
...I planned to become a warehouseman by storing grain in my unfinished basement, guest bedroom and garage...
...When the grain storage business began to boom 10 years ago," the New York Times told me, "warehousemen turned in many directions to acquire storage space...
...And sorghum...
...I had to make a decision about how to dress, whether in my flashy Neiman-Marcus suit—it's known as the anti-trust suit around our house —or in farmer's clothes...
...I'd like to find out about the crop support program," I quietly told a buxom woman in her 50s...
...So I invested in the stock market for the first time to help strengthen my country's economy in the fight against Communism...
...And like many Americans who followed their President off the cliff in the market's collapse the past few months, I soon found myself stuck with a big house, bought last year in anticipation of a continuing bear market...
...By comparison, my proposal was almost wholesome...
...I asked...
...Meanwhile, I had nothing to do but wait until Mrs...
...A picture of President Kennedy looked down at me with those questioning eyes...
...Ecclesiasticus, XXXVIII, 25...
...asked the second neighbor on my list...
...Good idea," he said...
...Not only is Leonia soil rich, the sun is as hot as Texas in the summer, there is plenty of water in the taps in every house, and there is a railroad running right through town...
...In the men's room, washing his hands...
...I had not done anything nice for her yet...
...To protect full-time cotton farmers, the Government would have to pay suburban farmers to not plant cotton, whether they liked it or not...
...Business is business...
...My plan was to go to the Department of Agriculture and volunteer not to plant cotton on my holdings this year...
...Our local ASCS office is located in a brick building on a street crowded with title insurance searchers, lawyers' abstract companies, sales promotion outfits and the other riff-raff of the commercial world one finds in back of county courthouses...
...The land is fertile...
...The same goes for all other crops being supported by the Department of Agriculture...
...She looked up the Department of Agriculture in the Bergen County telephone book and found a listing in Hackensack, the county seat...
...I did a lot of soul-searching before I went to make my pitch at the local Department of Agriculture office...
...What my skeptical neighbor was alluding to is that there has not been any real farming done on our land since the 18th century...
...She sat in a bull pen-like office with 12 other minor Department fonctionnaires, behind a barrier that obviously was intended to keep them away from citizens like me...
...I'll have to move faster than I planned...
...Holley, Flemington, Freehold, Hackettstown, places like that in New Jersey...
...a friendly man's Voice asked...
...I'm not planning to plant cotton,' I said...
...Smith about that," he said, picking up his suitcase...
...By the time I had reached the 10th neighbor—the extent of my grass roots sample—I knew I was on my way to becoming a millionaire...
...But he'll be right back...
...Although I was already down the road apiece, on my way to the next house, his words struck me like a thunderclap...
...Would you like to sell your cotton allotment...
...You must want crop supports," she finally said...
...I saw his bag packed in the corner and made a mental note that he could use a new suitcase...
...If the Department of Agriculture saw things my way, I would make Leonia the grain storage capital of the nation...
...Does your land have corn history...
...Pretty smart," my wife said, after I explained how I planned to feather our nest...
...Is she in Brazil...
...Architecturally speaking, it is an insignificant post-revolutionary (Russian) house, which costs too much to run and has far too much land around it...
...That's in New York," she said...
...If that pleased the Department enough to give me the $50-60 an acre they were giving farmers like Billie Sol Estes, I would volunteer to not plant soy beans on my land in 1962...
...Mrs...
...Good God, I thought, they're giving me the run-around already...
...And wheat...
...The national director and his assistant were fired for being friendly with Billie Sol...
...Since I had only one acre myself, I was anxious to get hold of my neighbors' allotments before I went out and proved the point...
...he asked, dropping his hoe...
...My family is planning to do some farming in Bergen County," I said...
...My God, I thought, this town's not big enough for two like me...
...That's across the street in Lillian's office...
...I know a lot of people in town...
...I asked enigmatically...
...The first thing I did to get my emergency Federal aid program started was write a "Dear Orville" letter to Orville Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture, asking for an appointment "to discuss a matter of vital interest to residents in Bergen County...
...I could have gotten all the allotments I needed dirt cheap, but I decided to temper the rod with some mercy and offer my neighbors a fair share on their allotment, about 10 per cent...
...I repeated the question...
...About my crop allotments...
...No, she's at home...
...Crop reports," she hollered as if she were calling hogs...
...Oh, Lordy, pick a bale of cotton...
...When I explained my mission at the third household, my neighbor's wife embraced me...
...He only goes to Mt...
...This isn't farm country," he said, "and you know it, Billie Sol Kitman...
...When I was younger, my parents taught me that God helped those who helped themselves...
...A speculator has to have a lot of land to make money...
...What's corn history...
...I asked as matter-of-factly as possible...
...The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh...
...If suburban home owners across the nation started planting cotton, the thing everybody connected with agriculture dreads most, 10-cent cotton, would soon be a reality...
...As he went out the door, he looked at me suspiciously...
...I had a chance to study what was soon to become the Department's busiest outpost in the East...
...But does Washington know it...
...I went to call on my next-door neighbor, who is a Columbia University professor...
...Cut that out," her husband said...
...Lord knows why...
...Smith has all the allotment histories on Bergen County right here," he said, patting a locked file cabinet...
...Once the crop allotment money started pouring in from the Department of Agriculture, I could get down to the business of pyramiding my holdings...
...Does anybody have them in Bergen County...
...These now conventional facilities included airplane hangars, railroad roundhouses, oil tanks, and bowling alleys...
...And how about your corn and wheat allotments...
...Why don't we become partners...
...I asked...
...Before I could offer to take him to Modell's Shopper's World, a leading discount store near Hackensack, his phone rang...
...Jersey is famous for corn," I answered...
...As county office manager for the Bergen-Essex-Passaic area, she is in charge of administering the Department's price support programs...
...One of its people in Texas committed suicide by hitting himself with a blunt instrument on the forehead, breathing carbon monoxide fumes, and then shooting himself in the stomach five times with a singleaction rifle...
...there are only 2,000 lots in town...
...He was so helpful, I hoped he wouldn't get fired for favoritism when my scheme was exposed...
...He really needs new shoes...
...I'm in the market for your cotton allotment...
...But he was leaving town in 15 minutes...
...Reading about Billie Sol Estes over the past week-end, however, I suddenly knew it was time to ask my country what it could do for me...
...Anything you want in the catalog," I whispered to the woman, "providing it's under three books...
...He was even more important than Lillian Smith...
...Can I help you...
...You mean, I'll have to do it," she said...
...Lillian Smith is the single most important individual in Bergen County farming...
...According to the way the price support legislation is written, everything is based on 1959 planting...
...But what if the Department of Agriculture won't pay...
...I know your game," the college professor shouted at me, jumping up and down in excitement...
...My what...
...Smith recovered, get her to bring Leonia's corn, cotton, sorghum, barley, wheat and soy bean histories up to date, and give her my wife's ranch mink coat...
...You can have my soy bean and sorghum grain allotment, too...
...Are you Lillian...
...The woman didn't hear me...
...But I was not surprised...
...The ASCS, I recognized from reading the Times, was the branch of the Department most hard hit by the Billie Sol Estes investigations...
...I knew the town was zoned against elevators, but I also knew the Department of Agriculture was not too fussy about where wheelersand-dealers put grain...
...If they signed over enough crops, that would at least cover their taxes for new sewers...
...We don't know about that here...
...All my neighbors liked the idea of getting something for nothing, except one...
...Billie Sol Estes started his empire with nothing, according to the New York Times, so I did not feel sheepish starting my allotment manipulation business with only one acre...
...To extricate myself from the disaster area my President had gotten me into, I needed money to convert the property into a shopping center...
...Here it is...
...For a moment, I thought of abandoning my plan to help my neighbors get rich...
...His shoes are scuffed and covered with dried mud...
...Doing God's work takes time," I said...
...The house is in Leonia, New Jersey, about two miles from New York City, in Bergen County...
...It really did not matter what Ovid said, since I wasn't planning to save the suburbs by actually farming...
...He's leaving in five minutes," the woman reminded me...
...His eyes narrowed shrewdly as I handed him a cigar...
...It's a free country," he said, opening and closing drawers in a desk...
...She's sick," the woman said...
...He failed to answer right away, which did not surprise my wife...
...You mean to say that if I planted, say, cotton this year, some future law might make 1962 the basis of eligibility...
...The only reason Leonia is not a farm center like Pecos, Texas, is that the people are too busy going into New York City to work in their advertising agencies, art studios, laboratories, editorial rooms and university seminars...
...I found him behind his house chopping at a crop of crab grass...
...I'm a religious man, you know that...
...It was the official, who I later learned was an executive attached to the state operational staff...
...He finished his call, and asked: "What are you planning to plant...
...I can't read Congress' mind, you'd better talk to Mrs...
...As an expression of my support for the Department's production controls program, I was even ready to volunteer to not plant anything the Department suggested, as long as they paid me for each crop I kept out of production...
...Sick...
...My neighbor, who is a painter, one of the finest artists in northern New Jersey, stroked his chin first, wiped his glasses, then said, "I'll have to talk it over with my accountant, of course, but I'm for selling...
...I'll pay cash, no questions asked...
...And he's wearing a winter-weight suit even though it is 85 degrees outside...
...She was screaming at her co-workers about where to tell me to go...
...Where is he...
...I asked...
...He shuffled through the pages, and then said, "There used to be a wheat farmer in Bergen County, but he went out of business...
...As fast as my neighbors turned over sections of their houses to me, I would fill them up with grain...
Vol. 45 • July 1962 • No. 14
